Happy Thanksgiving 2010!!

“Food, glorious food, that’s what I live for…” from the movie Oliver

What better time to think about food and the honey bee then at Thanksgiving time.

Yesterday our family had a wonderful celebration with blood kin and friend kin. We ate, drank, and were merry. At the same time, it was bitter sweet. This past year, we’ve lost several family and friends. In particular, we lost my husband’s mother. Over the past thirty years, she always prepared an aspargus casserole and she never allowed anyone else to make the dish. So, yesterday, we, my husband and I, prepared the dish to share in memory of her.

You should’ve seen us in the kitchen trying to read my husband’s notes on the recipe that he was able to write after repeated questioning of his mother prior to her passing. In true mother-n-law form, she had never written the recipe down because she didn’t want it to be made by me or anyone else. We laughed when we discovered my husband didn’t get the recipe down exactly correct.

His notes read it required two cans of long spear aspargus. Two cans were sitting on the counter. My husband began to put the casserole together only to come to a point when he said, “Uh, I think we need two more cans of aspargus.”

“You do, why? The receipe says two cans.”

“Yeah, but it says ‘repeat’ here.”

I looked at him puzzled. He continued, “I meant when I wrote this you go back and put two more cans of aspargus in and continue with the receipe.”

Needless to say, we didn’t have any more cans in the house. We called a neighbor to see if she had any, and of course she didn’t. Luckily, we had a store open in our little town and Hobbit King made a mad dash to get more aspargus. We were able to finish assembling the casserole only to come to the part where the receipe is supposed to say what temperature you cook and for how long. Yep, there was no information. So we guessed.

We took the casserole out of the oven in time to take it to our family dinner. It was bubbly and seemed to be brown on top, like mom had said it should be, but when we went to serve it, it didn’t look the same. No one said a word as they took their helping and placed it on their plate. It was so obvious that it was not quite done because as you lifted it out of the casserole the cheese just kinda hung there, the aspargus was stiff, and the soup was like glue. I looked at my husband and smiled. He whispered to me, “I guess she really could cook it better than us.”

I’m learning that honey bees are a lot like that, too. They forage and gather and each has a special job they do. Then they die. Along comes another group of honey bees, workers, to replace them and to help keep the hive clean, or forage, or protect the opening of the hive. As I learn more about the honey bee and it’s colony, I marvel at the parallels. The way they care for their brood as we care for our young. The way they care for their dead as we care for our loved ones who have passed on or are dying. Life is full of such cycles and Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on them, to give thanks for all that we have encountered or will have the privilege of doing.

May you have the blessings of life during this holiday time and throughout the rest of the year. I’ll be away from blogging the next few days. I’m off to enjoy family and friends.